


Oscar Wilde would not apologise

by pr_scatterbrain



Category: Bandom, Indie Music RPF, Music RPF, Panic At The Disco, The Sounds
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, F/F, F/M, Indie Music, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 08:53:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr_scatterbrain/pseuds/pr_scatterbrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer’s family never moved to Las Vegas, but he and Ryan find their way to each other anyway. </p><p>Featuring Maja as Spencer’s childhood friend and roommate, Lykke Li as Spencer’s bandmate, Gabe as Maja’s somewhat pathetic rock star ex and Z and Alex being the worlds worst best friends. A college AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oscar Wilde would not apologise

**Author's Note:**

> This originally began life as a bandomvalentine prompt from a few years back, and I think I showed it to everyone during the time I was writing it. But I especially have to thank Saire (ruintooeasy) - yet again this is another fic I couldn't have written without her help. She beta'd, bounced ideas and generally put up with me emailing her about this fic which I just couldn't seem to finish until now.
> 
> I would also like to thank my mixer morganya. Thank you so much for making such an wonderful mix. It really captures the mood I was aiming for and I feel so fortunate to have been given it. Thank you. 
> 
> You can download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?n9oms5z0dgb5n95  
> Or you can stream it here: http://8tracks.com/morganya/on-the-palm-of-my-hand

 

 

Sometimes Ryan isn’t quite sure how he gets from point A to point B. This is one of those times. It’s a Tuesday night and he doesn’t know why – or how – he ends up downtown, at some kind of lame house warming party when he started the night at Z’s place drinking cocktails and listening to Sinatra records. Yet here he is.

Beside him, he hears Tennessee telling Z to smile.

“Don’t tell me I don’t take you places,” she adds.

Z rolls her eyes.

Ryan goes into the kitchen to get a drink. But when he gets there, a blonde girl who he sort of recognises from somewhere explains that they’ve run out of the good beer. Ryan isn’t sure how he reacts to this announcement, but something must show on his face because the blonde girl nods as if she shares the same sentiment.

It isn’t even nine yet.

“I know,” she adds; all crocked grins and smeared mascara, and an unfamiliar accent colouring her voice. “But we still have the crap stuff left. Also, cream sherry.”

“No sherry!” some guy yells from across the room.

The blonde turns and gives him the finger. The guy just throws his head back and laughs at her. A few other people join in. The blonde swears at them, foul and incomprehensible.

The music gets turned up. The blonde disappears.

For a little while Ryan looks at the bottles of cheap mixed drinks and a soggy box of wine in the sink. When he finds his way back to the others they’re still standing in pretty much the same place. Half heartedly Z twists a loose streamer around her fingers and says something about some other thing going on. Some outdoor theatre thing she heard about from a guy in her lab group. Not that it matters, but Ryan doesn’t really want to go see some community theatre production of The Cherry Orchard. Not even to mock it afterwards. Another person suggests going into the city. No one has a car though. They’d have to get a cab. Or call someone with a car.

“I think Eric has a car this week,” Alex says.

Eric doesn’t. He sold it three months ago to buy plane tickets to see his girlfriend in Indiana. No one remembers apart from Ryan.

When they call him, he’s on a bar crawl with a bunch of freshmen and half drunk.

“Is it sleazy to go on a freshman bar crawl?” he asks.

Ryan thinks it is. But his friends mostly don’t care. Together, they haphazardly plan to meet him at the next stop. Ryan stays at the house warming party instead.

Half an hour later he finds out it isn’t a house warming party.

“It’s my party,” he gets told by a boy.

He points the ‘Welcome Home $pencer!?!!’ sign above the radiator. It’s homemade and the corners are all wrinkled. Ryan feels his cheeks heat. He should have seen that. He mutters an apology. But Spencer doesn’t care. Instead he asks if Ryan is crashing the party. Ryan opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, Spencer smiles and tells him it’s okay either way.

“I don’t care, but I asked my friends and none of them know you.”

“I can leave,” Ryan offers, pulling a little on one of his cufflinks.

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Spencer says, “I mean who are you?”

Ryan – Ryan blinks.

“Okay,” Spencer says, “I’ll start. I’m Spencer with a ‘S’ not a dollar mark.”

He smiles, all charm and ease and he’s younger than Ryan (Ryan can see that for himself), he looks like a kid, but for some reason Ryan can’t think of what to say even though he’s done this a million times before.

Spencer nudges him. “Your turn.”

“Ryan,” Ryan spits out, before blushing for some stupid reason. “I’m Ryan.”

Spencer asks how Ryan heard about his home coming. Ryan doesn’t really have an answer. Z and Alex just hear about these sorts of things. He doesn’t know how. He isn’t like that. Standing in Spencer’s living room, he knows that. But he isn’t sure about them. It has been more than an hour since they left. They could be anywhere now. If he were to go look for them, he wouldn’t even know where to start.

He asks Spencer about where he went instead.

Spencer grins and says, “Everywhere.”

It’s an awful cliché of an answer, but one Ryan supposes he can ask Spencer to expand on.

“Europe,” Spencer offers when prompted. “Mostly Sweden.”

He talks a bit about his gap year (years – one became two became three and a bit, Spencer explains), and he’s a little tipsy and more than a little beautiful and he doesn’t really know who Ryan is – a name doesn’t mean anything, not really – nor he doesn’t care that Ryan’s crashed his party. Not at all.

“I didn’t think people other than Maja’s ex have read her blog,” Spencer says at some point.

Ryan doesn’t know what or who Spencer’s talking about, but he doesn’t seem to care.

“He probably tweeted all the details about tonight or some asshole shit like that,” Spencer explains. “I bet that’s how you ended up here.”

“Maybe,” Ryan says. He doesn’t know.

Something about his answer makes Spencer smile so brightly.

“I owe him one,” Spencer says, as if it can just be said that simply.

Ryan – at the start of the night Ryan was drinking a pack of virgin mixed cocktails from cans and listening to crackling vinyl records in Z’s and Charlotte’s bathroom. He doesn’t know quite how to say this to Spencer or how to say anything. Not when Spencer is smiling at him like he’s something unexpectedly extraordinary. Something about the way it makes his heart flutter in response, make Ryan feel so deeply and furiously embarrassed. He leaves moments after Spencer is dragged away onto the makeshift dance floor by a brunette.

 

 

The next morning Ryan wakes up with a headache. His mouth feels gritty, and his hair a mess that he doesn’t bother fixing. When he gets to his first class, he sits up the back instead of down the front and texts a few people rather than listening to the lecture. Afterwards a few students from one of his tutorial group try to catch him. One wants a meeting to discuss the final essay, the other wants to clarify one of the reading assignments for the week. Despite Ryan’s best efforts, they both end up following him back to his office.

As they steps out of the student union and into the quad, the sun blinds Ryan and he almost trips. At the last moment he catches himself. But only just. In front of him, in the middle distance he sees light bounce off a guy’s – Spencer’s – hair. For a moment he is turned golden in the morning light, and all Ryan can do is stare.

“I’m not doing your homework,” he overhears the girl from the night before say.

“It’s your fault I’m hung over,” Spencer retorts.

The blonde makes a face. “I didn’t make you drink a bottle of dessert liquor Spence.”

“Come on,” he whines pathetically. “It’s not even really homework for you. Please?”

She manages to hold out for maybe a second before she breaks, her shoulders slumping in clear defeat. Grinning triumphantly, Spencer shoves a handful of paper into her hands.

Somehow Ryan catches his eye. Spencer raises one hand and waves.

Ryan –

He makes himself concentrates on answering the stupid questions his two students shoot at him.

 

 

Most of the morning is gone by the time the two students have finished with him. His official office hours are meant to be in afternoon from one until three. It’s only after they have left, Ryan thinks perhaps he should have made them wait and see him then. He isn’t particularly good at being a tutor. Although he reads all the material and aced the class back when he was an undergrad, sitting in his office fielding questions from students make him feel lacking in some crucial element that he should possess but doesn’t.

“You should just tell them the answers are all in the reading,” his officemate, Ivar, tells him. “That’s what I do.”

He makes it sounds so simple.

Ryan isn’t sure it would be with him. There is a difference between formulating answers in his head and saying them aloud. He knows that. But he wishes it wasn’t such a great one when it came to him.

Ivar shrugs, flippantly. “You shouldn’t worry so much,”

It isn’t that, Ryan tries to say, but he doesn’t quite manage.

 

 

His mother never worried. Never. At least that’s what Ryan remembers. But she never looked back either, so Ryan can’t be sure.

 

 

In the afternoon on Friday, Alex posts some crap on facebook and in the evening Ryan meets up with him and Z at some bar, to see some band that apparently is worth skipping out on Charlotte’s second cousin’s birthday party.

One pitcher into the night Z announces that she wants to drop out (again).

Alex doesn’t care. He says that.

Ryan feels more or less the same, but he doesn’t.

Z picks at her nails and talks a bit about getting old and how university is a waste of time anyway and how she already knows what she wants to do and being a dentist isn’t it. Alex rolls his eyes. Ryan goes to get them fresh drinks. He doesn’t really know how to deal with Z when she’s like this. It’s easier to waste ten minutes at the bar trying to catch the eye of the bartender. It’s not like he misses much. She’s still talking about the same shit when Ryan gets back from the bar with a fresh pitcher of pims.

“Just in time,” Alex says.

Ryan doesn’t say anything.

When he was younger things seemed to unfold differently. One thing lead directly into another without deviation. Middle school shifted into Junior high, public school changed into a Catholic one and as long as Ryan could keep the right grade point average things mostly worked out. He got into the right AP classes, had teachers write letters of recommendation, and then, eventually got himself into college, maybe not the best one, but one willing to hand him a full ride. It’s just now, with the ride almost over, things seem less clear.

Up on stage the opening act starts to set up.

“Oh,” Ryan says as a Spencer takes his seat behind the drum kit, while a brunette girl fusses with her microphone, guitar, keyboard and feathered headdress. “Oh.”

“Apparently they’re so bad they’re good,” Alex says.

Ryan opens his mouth –

“I know them,” he finds himself saying.

Z and Alex ignore him, already onto another topic, so Ryan repeats himself. It doesn’t do anything. Z is talking about taking a year off and going to India and Alex is mocking her because he always does with Z talks about living out of a backpack and sleeping in a youth hotel and getting some ‘life experience.’

“What?” Z snaps finally. “What?”

Alex rolls his eyes. “You talk about this every time some kid in one of your classes says something smarter than you.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You do.”

“Fuck you.”

Alex snorts. Z turns to Ryan for back up. Ryan looks up at the opening act.

They are between songs. Not many people care. They’re just the opening act.

From his table, Ryan has an unobstructed view. He watches the singer in her cape and now ruffled feathered headdress, unscrew the lid on a bottle of water. Turning to speak to Spencer, the lights catch the sweat on her brow and the way her hair is plastered to her neck. From behind his kit, Spencer nods and says something the mics don’t pick up. They exchange a few more words before they launch into their next song. It’s all electro synth and drums. Loud and fast and chaotic. It’s good. Ryan doesn’t know why people aren’t watching.

The singer’s voice is scratchy now. She doesn’t quite make all of the high notes.

It doesn’t matter a great deal, Ryan thinks, he thinks he even likes the flat notes.

The set finishes a little earlier than it should.

Beside him, Z and Alex are arguing. Still arguing. A few people are looking at them now.

Sometimes Ryan doesn’t like his friends. He doesn’t know what sort of person this makes him.

With the lights dimmed, Ryan has to squint to watch Spencer and a tech breaking down equipment and the main act of the night starting to set up. Z starts to talk about her charity work. Ryan drinks what’s left of his drink and goes to the bar to get another. While waiting for the bartender to pay attention him, he watches Spencer tumble off stage, all golden and alive. It is stupid and it is meaningless and he doesn’t really know Spencer at all (what does one conversation mean, anyway?), but his mouth dries when Spencer spots him and waves.

“Hey,” Spencer says, all flushed and out of breath. “Hey, is this you gatecrashing again?”

Ryan – it’s a joke. Something he should laugh at. But his mind is disconnected and instead of laughing or nodding or saying anything at all he turns over his wrist to show Spencer the smudged stamp the door bitch gave him.

Spencer grins and touches the ink with two fingers, maybe traces the edges a little. “So you’re a paying customer tonight.”

Ryan nods. However for some reason apparently he isn’t finished embarrassing himself enough for one night, because the next thing that comes out of his mouth is, “I couldn’t show you my ticket stub if you want?”

Spencer’s eyes light up with mirth and Ryan wishes he hadn’t said anything.

“No, that’s okay. I trust you,” he laughs, before waving down a bartender without any effort at all.

“We were meant to play for an extra twenty minutes,” he explains after they order their drinks. “But Lykke is getting over the flu.”

Ryan remembers how towards the end of the night he’d seen her drink out of abandoned red cups at the party. He tells Spencer they sounded good nevertheless instead. Spencer grins a throw away grin.

“We’re getting there.”

He says it like maybe they are. Ryan tries to nod like he understands. He isn’t sure if he does.

The conversation pauses when the bartender serves their drinks. Watching Spencer take his first slip of beer, Ryan tries to think of what to say. He can’t really think of anything. The thin pale cotton shirt Spencer is wearing is stuck to his chest. There is colour in his cheeks too. Ryan wants so very much to say something clever, something that Spencer will remember or something that will make him laugh or anything. Before he can, Lykke appears and laces her fingers through Spencer’s. Off stage she is smaller and having shed her costume, there almost seems to be less of her.

When Spencer introduces them, she holds out her hand for him to shake.

There is something very serious about her, he thinks.

“Maja’s almost ready to go on,” she tells Spencer afterwards.

“Hey you want to come and watch up front with us?” Spencer offers.

Ryan shakes his head.

“My friends,” he explains, as if it is an explanation.

Spencer nods. “Another time.”

Ryan takes this as his cue to leave. He isn’t very good at picking up on them, but he thinks it’s what he should do. Heading back to his table, he thinks he hears Lykke say something, maybe his name. Ryan assumes Spencer says something in reply, but he doesn’t really hear it.

 

 

The main act is The Sounds.

Ryan saw them play almost a year ago. Instantly he names and places the blonde girl’s face as Maja Ivarsson, the lead singer. She and her band have been doing the college circuit for the last year or so. Ryan managed to catch a few shows, but none since they got back from their summer tour.

Despite Spencer and Lykke finishing early, The Sounds don’t start early or even on time. They’re nearly half an hour late when the drummer counts then off, but Ryan is pretty sure it doesn’t even matter. They’re the sort of band people don’t mind waiting for. The set they finally end up delivering is loud, and Maja is wild. No one can take their eyes off her. She sings and she screams and prowls across the stage like she’s one second away from jumping off it into the crowd.

Afterwards, he thinks about going up to where Spencer and Lykke are standing at the side of the stage. He thinks about it for a while. He watches Spencer clap and cheer, and how Lykke leans against him. She fits against Spencer’s side neatly, but she smiles at Maja the entire time The Sounds are on stage.

Even before the encore, everyone is moving. Leaving or just moving on to the next location.

Having drunk away their cab fare he, Alex and Z end up walking back to campus in the cold. The pants Ryan is wearing don’t have pockets. Instead he blows warm air into his hands. Next to him, Z is quiet and sullen. Ryan feels worn too thin to deal with her. So he doesn’t. After a while Alex throws an arm around her waist and presses his cold nose behind her ear. She squeaks a little and he comments on the perfume she’s wearing. They are no longer fighting.

 

 

Just before mid-term break, right around when all the final essays and tests are being taken, Ryan runs into Spencer while stacking books. He’s on his knees, fishing behind the stacks for something.

“I heard some students hid books so other students can’t use them,” Spencer explains.

Ryan nods. They do. In his trolley are five books on English poetry that had been hidden in the French Revolution section. He tells Spencer just in case they were the ones he was looking for.

“No. Not unless they also are about 1940s post war architecture.”

Ryan shakes his head and starts placing them back on the shelfs. “I’m afraid they’re just about Keats.”

“Too bad.”

Spencer’s tone is wiry. Under the flickering florescent lights he looks a bit of a mess. Most students are, Ryan knows, especially ones who started their work at the last minute.

“Can I help?” he offers.

Spencer sighs.

Placing the final book back in its correct spot, Ryan plucks Spencer’s reading list out of his hands. By now he thinks most of the suggested texts will be gone. They find some in the reserve section though. Ryan leaves them and Spencer in the silent study area. A few times during his shift, he happens to pass by. In the corner of his eye, Spencer is right where Ryan left him. One hand propping up his chin, the other taking notes.

Ryan could go over. He could go over and check how Spencer’s cram session is going. He doesn’t. But he could.

Late in the afternoon, Ryan happens to find a book in the repair trolley out the back. It isn’t one of the books on Spencer’s list, but it is a comparative study of Vienna’s reconstructive efforts and how the different quarters of the city recovered in different ways. He doesn’t know if it will be useful, but he brings it out to Spencer anyway.

“You have to give it back before you leave,” he makes Spencer promise, because he has to. Technically this book isn’t in circulation.

Spencer nods and sincerely pinky promises. There is a pen mark on his cheek. It makes the corner of Ryan’s mouth twitch.

Though the library closes at six Ryan’s shift ends at four. He doesn’t really remember that until later. At a quarter to three, he goes and checks on Spencer. He’s still working. Ryan watches him flick back through the pages, stop, and type something into his laptop. For a little while Ryan thinks about telling one of the other staff members, maybe Ivy, one of the part time employees who he likes. She wouldn’t care about Ryan’s infraction. The week before last she came into work sick and spent her entire shift hiding in the reserve section with a box of tissues. He doesn’t tell her though.

At a quarter to six, Spencer returns the book. Ryan places a bookmark in his novel to mark his place.

“Hey, thanks again,” Spencer tells him. “You’re a life saver.”

“You’re welcome.”

Taking the book from Spencer, Ryan goes and places it back in the repair pile. When he comes out Spencer is still there. There are purple circles under his eyes, and when he goes to tuck his hair behind his ear, Ryan sees that his fingers are stained neon yellow and green with highlighter ink.

“Want to go get a coffee?” Spencer asks.

Ryan doesn’t do – hasn’t done this before, but he finds himself nodding. It makes Spencer smile. Ryan’s hands tremble a little when he goes and gathers his belongings, but Spencer is waiting for him when he gets out.

“Where too?” he asks.

Spencer laughs. “I don’t know. I’m still finding my way.”

Ryan looks at his feet. He forgot. He – sometimes it feels like Spencer’s always been here. Always. Right from the very beginning. It’s silly. Ryan offers to take Spencer to a place he knows. On the walk over he asks about architecture. He remembers Spencer up on stage. He can’t really picture him in an office behind a computer designing buildings.

“It’s just an elective,” Spencer explains.

“What’s you’re major?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t really decided,” Spencer answers. “Maybe Swedish.”

Whatever Ryan was expecting it was not that. Spencer laughs like he had expected that reaction and maybe he had. Not many undergraduates would pick Swedish as a major. If any.

“I speak it, I guess,” Spencer offers, when Ryan asks why.

Over coffee he explains how he met Maja. She was a foreign exchange student who spent a year at his school.

In his head Ryan fills out the details. She was older and beautiful. Spencer learnt Swedish for her; something to get her attention. Or she taught it to him, among so many other things older, European girls like her teach boys like Spencer. Something deep inside Ryan’s chest twists. He does this. He knows he does. He fills out these details and they’re probably all wrong.

 

 

Ryan doesn’t know how but somehow he ends up walking Spencer home afterwards. Or coming home with him. Ryan doesn’t know which. By his side, Spencer grins.

“This isn’t breaching some University code or something?”

Ryan doesn’t know. Spencer is tall and slender and Ryan doesn’t know.

Spencer laughs; laughs and bumps his hips against Ryan’s. It was a joke. Ryan missed it.

Spencer’s apartment building is old. Maybe pre-war. In the lobby he waves to a group of Mormon kids in their buttoned shirts and neatly ironed slacks.

“They’re okay,” he says, when he catches Ryan’s look.

Ryan’s skin feels too small as he watches Spencer unlock his mail box. He should be saying something. Should be making conversation. That’s what people do. That’s what he does. Or would do, if he could. But he can only stare as Spencer collects his mail and re-locks his mailbox and follow him to the stairwell. There are only a few floors in the building. Spencer is on the third. Apartment number three. Ryan remembers the home coming party and the streamers that had been tied around the handrails. Halfway up the first flight, Ryan stumbles, but before he can fall Spencer steadies him, places a hand on Ryan’s arm.

He’s gorgeous. Ryan’s mouth goes dry. Because Spencer is. And Ryan wants him so very much.

Spencer pulls away when Ryan is steady on his feet. Ryan wants to pull him close again. He thinks, maybe he could. But he isn’t sure. There is a difference between what he feels and what he wants Spencer to feel. He reminds himself of that as he watches Spencer fishes his keys out of his jeans when they reach his door. The lock sticks.

“Piece of shit,” Spencer says as he juggles it.

Ryan want’s to say something, but finds he cannot.

Spencer’s apartment is smaller than Ryan remembers. Sitting on the couch are two women. His roommates, Ryan remembers. Or roommate and band mate.

Spencer introduces them again though. “Maja and Lykke, this is Ryan,”

They grin up at him.

“Hello again,” Lykke says, wiggling her fingers at him.

Spencer rolls his eyes.

On the TV there is paused film. The still flickers a little. It’s from some 60s noir thriller. Somehow Ryan ends up staying and watching it with them. He isn’t quite sure what it’s about, not even after Maja explains it to him. But it doesn’t really matter. Spencer falls asleep at around the half way point. His head lolls to the side and the colours from the film skate across the pale length of his neck.

When the credits roll, Maja asks if Ryan wants to crash on their couch.

He shakes his head.

“You should stay,” she says. “Spencer will make you breakfast if you stay.”

“I –”

“Stay,” she tells him.

He watches as she gathers Lykke up. Sleepy, she is quiet and almost childlike. With clumsy fingers she grabs at Maja’s shirt and mumbles nonsense into the crock of her neck. Gently Maja smooths a hand over Lykke’s mussed hair and shuttles her off to bed. When Maja comes back, she hands him a blanket and ruffles Spencer’s hair, waking him.

Spencer blinks a little; his eyes nothing more than slits of blue.

“Hey,” he mumbles.

“Hey,” Ryan whispers back.

“You staying?” he asks.

Ryan – he stays.

 

 

In the morning Spencer makes waffles and toast and Maja licks Lykke’s sticky jam fingers clean. From the other side of the counter Ryan watches and accepts seconds when they are offered. While eating, he finds out that Spencer and Lykke have booked some time at a local practice space in the afternoon. Spencer invites Ryan, but he has a day shift at the library so he can’t go.

“Another time,” Lykke offers.

Ryan would like that and he thinks she means it when she says she would too.

In daylight she is hardly anything like what he saw on stage. She doesn’t look much like the person that danced the twist with Spencer at his welcome home party either. There are red pillow crease lines on her cheeks, left over eyelinner smudged around her eyes and fresh purple hickies on her skin. But there is something about her tone of voice that is open. While Spencer goes and showers, she washes the dishes and asks Ryan about what he’s doing in college. He doesn’t really know how to answer her questions, but it doesn’t seem to matter all that much. When he asks, Lykke briefly tells him she is in her third year. Ryan gets the feeling school doesn’t figure that highly into her list of priorities. He doesn’t know about Maja. She chimes in every now and then. But mostly Lykke leads the conversation.

A quarter of an hour before his shift, Spencer walks Ryan to the bus stop and waits there with him until it comes.

“You don’t have too,” Ryan tells him. “I’ll be fine.”

Spencer smiles. His hair is wet from his rushed shower and the collar of his t-shirt is damp. When the bus comes, Spencer takes Ryan hand in his and kisses him as the hydraulic breaks hiss. It leaves Ryan shaken and stupid. It also makes Ryan wish Spencer good luck with his essay. Even though it shouldn’t, this only make Spencer kiss him again before shoving him onto the bus.

“Good luck with your shift, Ry,” Spencer tells him, the corner of his mouth twitching.

Ryan feels his cheeks heat.

 

 

Mid term break arrives early.

Ryan and his officemate spend most of it grading papers.

With a pencil Ryan circles spelling mistakes and places neat tick next to interesting paragraphs.

It isn’t so bad, he thinks, when pressed to explain himself. It could always be worse.

The campus is empty. Over lunch Ryan checks his inbox and finds an email from Z. She’s volunteering again, this time at a random organic food festival in wine country. It’s not quite like the summer where she almost joined the Peace Corps, but it’s something he supposes she’ll talk about for the next few months whenever dentistry gets her down. Leana and Eric are there with her. In the photograph Z attached to her email they look happier than she does.

He writes her a short email back filled with things he knows will make her look happier in the next photograph. It’s easy. The tedium of marking essays doesn’t really need any creative flourishes.

He does not tell her about Spencer. After he sends the email he wonders if he should have.

 

 

Over the break, Spencer and Lykke pick up a few extra gigs. Added together, they sort of amount to a tour in that the gigs involve them driving out of town and sometimes crashing on friends of friends couches or in fans spare rooms for weeks at a time. Ryan manages to go see a few. If he wanted, Ryan could go to all of them. Spencer puts his name on the door. Ryan still doesn’t know quite what to do with that.

When they return, rumpled and ragged, they sleep for most of the following three days.

Ryan doesn’t see Spencer until he drops in to Ryan’s office.

His jeans are dirty but his hair is clean.

“Hey,” he smiles.

Ryan caps his red pen. “Hey.”

“Been a while,” Spencer says.

The easy nonchalance of his comment makes Ryan laugh. “I’ve followed your band updates on twitter.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Maybe. I don’t really think you should tweet drunk,” he tells Spencer just to see how he’ll react.

Spencer covers his face with his hands. “Oh no.”

And as good as Ryan is at drifting through life, all it takes is that one moment and he is breathless.

When Spencer invites Ryan out, all Ryan can say is yes.

The night starts off in some random Thai restaurant. Spencer’s friends order too much cheap food and drink too much awful beer and they talk loudly in order to be heard over dim. Maja keep putting food onto Ryan’s plate and Spencer throws an arm over Ryan’s shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan watches the line of Spencer’s throat and the way his fingers tap his glass of water.

Ryan doesn’t want to be anywhere else but here.

By the time dessert is served, Maja’s band are slurring words in their native tongue and Lykke is trying to remember the name of this bar she thinks they should all go too.

“It started with a J. Or a Z. You know, the one with a roof patio garden thing and the weird lights in the bathrooms.”

No one knows what she’s talking about.

They end up going back to Felix and Fredrik’s place at about two am where they make everyone breakfast. After all the Thai and beer, the prospect of scrambled eggs and syrup covered pancakes is kind of disgusting. The Swedes in the group are undaunted. Ryan is a little amazed by Lykke’s fortitude, but not so much by the cover of a Backstreet Boys song she somehow end up perform.

“They were my favourite band as a kid,” Spencer admits completely unembarrassed.

They were Ryan’s too. But he’d never reveal that. Alex and Z would disown him.

As the night slows down, Spencer pulls Ryan into the guest bedroom. When he kisses Ryan, he is smiling. Ryan feels his heart race and has hands shake and he tries not to let it show. He doesn’t want it to show. Not when Spencer is smiling so brightly. Outside the door, Ryan can hear people laughing and Jasper calling Lykke a filthy liar and something else in what Ryan assumes to be Swedish.

In the dark Spencer undresses Ryan against stale sheets. Bony and awkward, Ryan doesn’t really compare to Spencer who is pale and lean above him. With his index finger, Spencer traces the red mark the elastic in Ryan’s boxers has left on his skin. He asks if Ryan has done this before. Ryan wants to lie but instead tells the truth.

“Okay,” Spencer simply says as if it is.

And it seems to be.

For all Ryan’s anxiety, there isn’t really anything sophisticated about what they do. Spencer just kisses Ryan until he can’t really think, and rocks their bodies together until Ryan is grasping and digging his fingers into Spencer’s shoulders. At some point Spencer reaches for the bedside draw but apart from a few bobby pins and a guitar pick, there isn’t anything inside it. Rather than swearing, Spencer laughs and licks his palm and wraps it around both of them. Ryan’s heart is doing double time by then and that’s really all it takes. Spencer comes a few moments afterwards, bitting into Ryan’s shoulder with a muffled curse.

They stay like that for a short time, wrapped around each other until Spencer pulls himself away. Reaching for a shirt that Ryan hopes isn’t his, Spencer cleans them up. There is something very gentle about the way he touches Ryan and Ryan finds himself shaking a little.

“Hey,” Spencer says, “Hey there, are you alright?”

Ryan is. He tells Spencer that. But Spencer pulls him close as if he isn’t.

 

 

A month later Lykke drops out of school, and returns to Europe.

It takes both Maja and Spencer completely by surprise.

 

 

Spencer comes over to Ryan’s place with a borrowed guitar some time after he drives Lykke to the airport.

“Jasper said they might need another guitar tech when they go on tour in the summer,” he explains.

Experimentally he strums a few strings. Ryan watches for a while before he tugs the guitar away from Spencer. Spencer lets him. Ryan’s not very good at this. He’s spent the last few years of his PhD writing and reviewing and submitting pieces that sometimes are published but often aren’t. But he doesn’t have words for this. He straddles Spencer’s lap and maybe he isn’t good at this either but Spencer lets Ryan unbuckle his belt and unzip his jeans.

Ryan never thought’s he’d want this but sinking to his knees he does.

He’s hard by the time Spencer comes. The hand Spencer has tangled in Ryan’s hair grounds him, and he doesn’t need Spencer to touch him. It’s enough to be on his knees, with the taste of Spencer on his tongue and the sound of Spencer panting above him.

 

 

In the mail Lykke sends Maja and Spencer poems explaining herself. They don’t really explain anything though.

Spencer lets Ryan read his.

It’s short, irritatingly poetic and written on a paper serviette from a major fast food chain. It expresses everything yet nothing. Ryan doesn’t want to think what Lykke wrote for Maja.

“The problem with Lykke is she loves the idea of lust more than the idea of love,” Spencer explains when he and Ryan are in bed later that night.

Ryan – Ryan doesn’t have that problem.

His mother did.

He doesn’t know about his father.

But then again, Ryan doesn’t really speak to his father. In the past their estrangement meant something different, something pointed and icy. For a long time doing things like no picking up the phone and staying on campus during the holidays was a rebellion, a fuck you, something dramatic and adolescent. Now it isn’t so much. Distance is distance though. Just now Ryan wears it differently.

He doesn’t go home often, but when he does the silence between then is awkward and carries with it a muted sort of sadness.

Over the summer break, Ryan spent three weeks of it on his father’s porch drinking beer in the evenings and making large dinners so that he could leave his father with a freezer full of left overs. When he and his father were in the same room, sometimes they’d talk a little. If a college football game was on, they’d watch that together; allowing the cheers and the commentary fill the spaces between them.

It wasn’t a particular hardship, but it isn’t anything Ryan carries easily with him.

They do love each other. They just don’t know how to care for each other properly. They never knew how.

 

 

Almost exactly a week after Lykke send her poems, Gabe Saporta turns up.

The Gabe Saporta. As in the one from the records in Ryan’s childhood bedroom, the tracks he used to have on his iPod and the infamous interview in _Nylon_  magazine where he talked about French kissing William Beckett when he was underage and being kissed by Leighton Meester when she was high and bored of watching marathons of _I Claudius_ while on tour. That Gabe Saporta.

He isn’t what Ryan expected.

Hung over, dressed in a dirty mismatched neon sweatsuit, Gabe makes himself a fixture on Spencer and Maja’s couch. He spends most of his time like that; hung over, badly dressed and taking up space (but not playing any rent).

“His band broke up,” Spencer tells Ryan.

Ryan doesn’t understand how Spencer can say that so calmly. “Your band just broke up too.”

Spencer shrugs.

Spencer’s indifference doesn’t mean much when Gabe starts talking about Midtown. He goes into great detail about their epic rise and spiral down. He goes into a great detail about everything. His band, every other band on DanceDecay’s label, any pseudo celebrity he ever had the fortune to come into contact with. He only pauses when Maja enters the room. He always seems to lose his place when Maja’s around.

“He’s still in love with her,” Spencer explains, as if it’s nothing. Maybe it is.

With Lykke gone, Maja is not like how she was when Lykke was by her side. Once when Ryan is getting a glass of water in the middle of the night, he finds Gabe rocking Maja in his arms and telling her it will all be alright. From the shadows, Ryan watches Gabe kisses her temple and her cheeks and the corner of her mouth and he thinks Spencer was telling the truth.

Spencer always tells the truth though. Sometimes when Ryan’s around him, Ryan feels striped bare. No matter what he does or how he acts, Spencer just sees through him. It’s exhilarating and terrifying and Ryan constantly feels as if he is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

 

 

A fortnight into his stay Gabe broadens his horizons and takes to hanging around campus. Regrettably, it takes him all of a week to discover the location of Ryan’s office. Spencer swears he didn’t tell. But Ryan wouldn’t put it past Gabe to follow Spencer around until he unknowing led Gabe to Ryan’s office door.

Against Ryan’s will he gets used to Gabe chatting up his underage freshman students, signing autographs and receiving invitations to random house parties and under 18s netball matches.

“I’m a big supporter of the sports, Ross.”

Ryan doesn’t even dignify that with an answer.

Alex thinks Gabe is awesome. Gabe thinks Z looks a little like Maja, if he squints. It makes Ryan uncomfortable, especially when Gabe invites himself to have lunch with them. Other than not paying for his own meal, Gabe makes Tennessee sit on his lap when they run out of enough chairs. Once or twice Ryan catches him eating off her fork. It makes Tennessee giggle. This only encourages Gabe and without being prompted he bounces her on his knee and tells them all the same glittering stories of stardom and fame and heartbreak and kissing Pete Wentz. They (and everyone sitting within hearing distance), lap them up.

Ryan pushes his plate aside.

There are grass stains on Ryan’s dress pants. He sees them just as Gabe starts talking about how he partied it all old school with Demi Lovato pre-rehab. With his nails, Ryan scratches at the stains, as if that might make a difference. It doesn’t. A few pieces of dried grass come off, but the stains are still there. He can’t remember how he got them. The suit is a light weight cotton. He can’t even remember when he last wore it. Maybe he didn't get the stains on it. Maybe it was the person who owned it before him, the person who donated the suit to the local charity shop. Maybe. Probably. Ryan doesn't know. For a little while he picks at the stained fabric.

“And that is how accidentally hosted the Latin Grammy’s” Ryan catches Gabe saying, concluding his last tale.

As if on cue, everyone laughs, including Gabe because apparently he’s that sort of person.

Ryan asks for the check.

 

 

On the way back to his office, Gabe slings an arm over Ryan’s shoulder and kisses his cheek affectionately.

“So, you haven’t told them about Spence,” he says as they walk across campus. “That’s kind of a dick move on your part.”

 

 

It’s not that Ryan hasn’t told anyone about Spencer. It’s just –

When he first met Alex during orientation week, Alex thought Ryan was gay.

Back then Ryan didn’t know what he was. He doesn’t now. Not really. But he doesn’t really know what he and Spencer are, either. So. Yeah. He hasn’t told his friends anything.

 

 

Gabe spends the rest of the day lounging in Ryan’s office reading through essays.

“This deserves a better grade,” he comments occasionally. Or, “Half this bibliography is made up.”

Ryan ignores him.

At about four in the afternoon, Spencer drops by as he sometimes does.

“I thought you had class,” Gabe chides, pulling Spencer down onto the couch next to him.

Spencer shrugs. “Nothing I don’t know or Maja can’t teach me later.”

Gabe nods, as if that’s sufficient. Ryan – Ryan doesn’t think it is. Maybe Spencer’s language classes are different to the courses Ryan took in his undergraduate degree. But it’s difficult to know when Spencer doesn’t seem to care too much either way. Ryan knows he shouldn’t judge. Spencer isn’t on a scholarship like Ryan is.

“Hey, Spence,” Gabe says. “Guess what I did today?”

From his side of the desk, Ryan feels himself freeze.

Across from him, Spencer is eying Gabe in a reasonably indulgent manner. “I don’t have to guess. I saw you hacking into Maja’s facebook this morning.”

Gabe makes a face. “It’s not hacking when she forgets to sign out of her account.”

Spencer gives him a look.

“It’s not,” Gabe tells him. “But I would appreciate you not mentioning this to her.”

“You changed her status to ‘in a relationship with Gabriel Saporta.’ She noticed.”

“We are more or less together. It’s not a lie,” Gabe huffs.

Ryan lets out a breath he had not know he had been holding.

 

 

Gabe and Spencer end up hanging around until Ryan finishes up for the day. It takes him forever to reorganise all the papers Gabe had flipped through and even longer to double check that Gabe hadn’t altered any of Ryan’s grades or added unnecessary comments in the margins. Gabe is insulted by the insinuation.

“I would never interfere with higher education,” he tells Ryan on the way out of the building.

Ryan thinks he would, but he holds his tongue.

Gabe takes this as assent and slings an arm over Ryan and Spencer’s shoulders. Like that, they walk through the campus. It’s embarrassing as hell. Ryan is certain he spots a few of his students snickering at him when they pass by the student union. But when he chances a glance at Spencer, he seems unmoved by Gabe’s antics.

“You get used to is,” Spencer explains later when they are over at The Sounds practice space. “The first time I meet him he tried to invite himself into a threesome with Ly and I.”

Ryan blinks.

“Yeah,” Spencer says. “Threw me too. But he grows on you.”

Felix snorts. “That’s not what Ly said,”

“Ly tends to embellish the truth.”

“And you don’t?”

Spencer shrugs. “Not like her.”

“No. Not like her.” Felix nods. “But you and Maja were always suckers for her.”

 

 

Spencer and Lykke.

It’s strange really, for all the things Ryan found himself inventing when he had too much free time, he never imagined that they were together. But clearly they were. In retrospect, Ryan should have picked up on it so much earlier. He looks back at the first gig and how she had fitted against Spencer’s side, and the familiarly in which she had navigated around both Maja and Spencer in the apartment they shared.

Spencer and Lykke.

It makes Ryan feel foolish for not seeing it then.

 

 

Felix and Fredrik throw a party the weekend leading up to final exams. It’s awful timing, but Ryan allows his arm to be twisted and drops by early in the evening.

“Don’t you have a linguistic examine tomorrow morning?” Ryan asks Spencer, when he catches Spencer helping Jasper make cocktails in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Spencer nods. “But I can’t learn anything in twelve hours.”

“You could sleep,” Ryan tells him.

“I could.”

But it’s clear he isn’t going too. There is laughter in Spencer’s eyes. This is the only time Ryan has seen him outside the library all week. Perhaps there is something about his mannerisms looks a little too strung out but Ryan doesn’t care. Not when Spencer is smiling and handing Ryan a stupidly fancy cocktail in a paper cup. It makes something inside Ryan loosen and when he smiles back at Spencer, Spencer pulls him close and presses a kiss on the corner of his mouth.

“That’s the spirit,” Spencer tells him, his eyes so bright.

“It’s stupidity,” Ryan corrects. “Tomorrow you’re going to regret all of this.”

“Probably,” Spencer agrees, but Ryan can tell he doesn’t care.

“And,” Ryan adds, feeling buoyed by two cocktails. “I’m not going to be the one to tell you ‘I told you so.’”

“I hope not.”

Spencer’s full of shit. Ryan knows this by now. But he doesn’t really care. Jasper keeps making everyone drinks and they keep drinking them and Gabe is playing DJ and in the end, Ryan stays much later than he should have.

After the party wines down, Spencer invites himself back to Ryan’s place under the pretense of getting some sleep but instead of sleep he presses Ryan down against the bed and makes him gasp and squirm and come quick and fast and easy.

Like it’s that easy.

 

 

Ryan never gets used to exam periods. He’s been a TA for a while now, but each semester they catch him off guard and send him into a tail spine. This is the excuse he plans to give Spencer anyway, for not seeing him more, though he doesn’t think he’ll need to use it. For all Spencer’s nonchalance, the few times Ryan’s been able to catch up with him have been in the library stacks where Ryan spent most of their time together helping him track down books.

When he drops over at Spencer and Maja’s place, he is surprised to find Spencer packing. “I though The Sounds tour began in a fortnight.”

Ryan wrote it in his diary, so it wouldn’t slip his mind.

“It does.”

Ryan – “Then why are you packing.”

Spencer pauses. “Lykke called.”

 

 

Apparently Lykke meet a producer in Berlin who really loved the demo she and Spencer had recorded.

So much so, he wanted to work with them on their first EP.

In his head, Ryan works it out. Lykke must have called more than a few weeks ago for Spencer to have rearranged tickets and for Maja and her guys to have found a replacement tech.

 

 

Ryan looks at Spencer, but finds he can’t quite process what he is saying. “You’re going to Berlin?”

“Yeah. They managed to get some studio time this month.”

“What about school?”

Spencer shrugs. “I can come back at some point.”

And. Right. Ryan feels stupid. Of course Spencer might come back. At some point.

 

 

And just like that, Spencer is gone.

 

 

Ryan goes back to researching, marking papers and sleeping through lectures. On Fridays he has drinks with Alex and Z. Sometimes they go to parties. Sometimes they go on bar crawls and watch Eric flirt with disinterested teenage girls and watch teenager boys flirt with Leanne. Occasionally they go to gigs.

Ryan doesn’t run into any of Spencer’s friends. He sees a few people he vaguely recognises, but not anyone in particular.

The Sounds are still on tour. Or so Ryan assumes.

During the summer break, Ryan makes a point of going home for a week and a half between TA’ing a Medieval literature class being run as part of the schools summer program. Las Vegas isn’t any different to how it was when he last left it. Neither is his childhood home. The front garden is overgrown though. From his bedroom window, he wakes to dead branches tapping on the window and a view of straggly over grown grass. The neighbour lends Ryan a lawn mower. After Ryan finishes with it, the yard almost looks presentable. The effect transforms the house, making it appear somewhat neat, like it is looked after rather than merely inhabited.

In the evening he and his father sit on the porch, the radio crackling between them.

It isn’t too bad.

Funny how differently things seem now he is no longer sixteen.

Over the wire he hears that Alex has gone back to California for the holidays. On facebook, he posts a lot of picture of beaches and night clubs and a sweet blonde young woman who apparently is a friend of a friend of a friend. Ryan looks at some of the images and worries a little because he has seen that expression in Alex’s eyes before. For all his carelessness, Alex has a bad habit of making a mess of things when given half a chance.

Z surprises everyone and actually goes on a backpacking adventure around Thailand. Although most of her time is spent patronising spas and resorts, she teaches English at an orphanage for part of her trip. Ryan looks at the photographs she posts on facebook too. In most of them she looks sunburnt. In some of them, she looks happy. But that’s her. It’d be foolish to expect anything else. It’s still nice though, to see her smile.

At the supermarket, Ryan runs into a few people he went to high school with. He catches up with a few of them while he’s in town.

That isn’t too bad either.

He never had close friends in school. Never had anything like Spencer and Maja. He finds himself envying their relationship a little after a few stilted conversations with old lab partners and school captains. It makes it harder to understand how Spencer could leave Maja for Lykke.

 

 

The new school year begins.

Ryan gets two papers published, and is invited to speak at a symposium in Seattle. The university makes a bursary available to help accommodate the trip. It doesn’t cover all of the expenses, but Ryan works it out and if he budgets carefully, he can just afford it.

If he misses Spencer, well, Ryan is thinks it will pass. If not soon, then eventually.

 

 

He sees Maja occasionally. With Spencer and Lykke gone, it feels strange to see her walking around campus with people other than them. Once they end up waiting for coffee in the same queue.

“Ry,” she says. “Hey.”

Ryan’s never been good with people. It had been so easy with Spencer; Ryan can still remember the way his arm had felt casually strung across Ryan’s shoulders and how effortlessly Spencer could bridge silences and link conversations together. Without him around, it’s a struggle to talk to Maja.

They piece together a conversation about school. It isn’t anything special really. Just small talk. But during the course of it, Ryan learns that Maja’s almost half way through her undergraduate degree. From what Ryan had seen in the past, she appeared rather indifferent about her classes. But he thinks maybe he got that wrong. She’s maybe a decade older than him, and as she talks about her professors and her assigned reading, he thinks maybe she just finds it difficult in a way Ryan doesn’t. Ryan breathes words and theories. Maja is instinctual and a visual thinker, but she does care about her education. Not the way Ryan does, but it’s something important to her. Something that she has her heart set on achieving. It’s just taking her longer to do it than Ryan and his friends.

“He asks about you,” Maja says before they part.

Ryan –

Maja bites her lip. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, it’s okay,” Ryan tells her.

It isn’t. But there are some things Ryan keeps to himself.

 

 

It’s exciting to travel to the symposium.

Ryan’s never really gone anywhere.

School yes, but nowhere else really.

He doesn’t get much of a change to see Seattle, but what time he does have he tries to make use of. On his one afternoon off, he rides the monorail and eats at the Pike Place Market. With his smart phone, he snaps a few dozen pictures and posts them on facebook. It isn’t as exciting as Thailand or a sunny blonde girlfriend, but Ryan likes the idea of being able to share his trip with people and of having something his own to share.

 

 

When he returns from Seattle, he feels weary. Despite his years of academia, he has never quite gotten the knack of being able to stomach speaking in public. The concept of a Q&A session has always made him feel anxious.

As such it takes him aback to see posters advertising tour dates of Spencer and Lykke’s band at the bar when Ryan goes to have drinks with his friends.

Alex nods up at the poster. “They’re meant to be pretty amazing.”

“You remember them,” Z says. “We saw them open for The Sounds this time last year.”

Alex passes her a cigarette. “Apparently the drummer went to school here.”

Ryan –

Ryan doesn’t plan on going. It would be easy to find an excuse to back out at the last minute, but on the day he doesn’t use any of them.

In his head, he calls it curiosity.

In his bathroom in his apartment, he threads a belt through the belt loops of his new jeans and ducks his glaze when he catches sight of his reflection. Maybe he’s not being completely honest. But that’s not much different to usual so he buckles his belt and when that isn’t enough to settle his anxiety, he pulls the laces on his brogues tight and knots them securely.

In his head, he thinks, one beer. He can do one beer.

By the time he arrives, he believes it.

The first time Ryan saw Lykke perform, she had a viral infection and was raspy and short of breath the entire set. This time she throws her voice around, howling and sounding joyful and mournful and everything in between. From the bar, Ryan watches her and not Spencer. He watches her dark brown hair fall out of its elaborate up do and the way her make-up starts to run under the hot stage lights, how it smudges when she wipes her face with the back of her hand.

In the crowd, he thinks he spots Maja and a few of her boys standing up the front by the speakers. But he could be mistaken. Everyone is dancing. The venue is dark and awash with people crowding up against the stage.

No one is ignoring Lykke or the driving beat of the music this time.

She and Spencer end up playing two encores. However even that is not enough. When they stumble off stage afterwards, people surround the merch table to talk to them.

Ryan doesn’t know why he came.

In the darkness, the pale length of Spencer’s neck and hollow of his throat seem to glow. Ryan swallows a breath.

For a moment, Ryan thinks about going over. But he’s done that once already.

 

 

Maja catches Ryan outside the venue, trying to hail a cab home. “Hey, stick around.”

He shakes his head.

“He misses you.”

Ryan doesn’t know what Spencer could possibly have to miss.

 

 

Back in his apartment he unlaces his brogues, unbuckles his belt and exhales slowly. The sweat on his skin is cooling and the adrenaline that had been pumping through his veins is fading. His hands shake a little– his wrists so pale and thin in the bad lighting – when he pours himself a glass of water, but they’re almost steady by the time he finishes it.

The night is over and done with. His curiosity, or whatever it was that drove him to the gig, is theoretically settled. Tomorrow he will get up and go to university and it will be no different than any other day.

His phone vibrates with a text message. Z is wondering where he is.

It’s late. He should really be in bed trying to sleep off the alcohol Alex insisted on buying everyone.

His phone vibrates again. Ryan thumbs it open.

 _hey, u still here?_ Spencer asks.

Ryan – Ryan rereads it.

_no_

 

 

No.

 

 

Maja drops by the next day.

Despite how often he was at her place, it’s the first time she’s been over at his. It feels a little awkward especially when the first thing she does is apologise for how she acted the night before.

“I shouldn’t have tried to interfere,” she says. “It was shitty.”

Ryan shrugs. “It’s okay.”

It isn’t an answer. Not a real one. But it’s enough.

Pouring her a mug of coffee, Ryan wonders if that’s it. They had always gotten along when Ryan was with Spencer. But Ryan wouldn’t call them friends. He liked her, but she had always been easy to like.

“Are you okay?” he finds himself asking, thinking for the first time of how it must have been for her to see Lykke.

She smiles a little. “Gabe’s trying to get me to join his band.”

“Gabe has a band?”

She shakes her head. “He has one of Jesper’s old guitars and too much ambition.”

“Isn’t that how he ended up hosting the Latin Grammies?”

“Pretty much.”

Ryan wouldn’t be surprised if Gabe’s entire life is made up of similar stories. He says as much and Maja shakes her head fondly. Finishing her coffee, she places her mug in his sink. It’s a small thing, but it’s a nice gesture.

Ryan feels stupid asking, but it feels like now or never. “Spencer – he’s okay right?”

Maja nods.

“Good,” Ryan breaths.

“I meant it, what I said last night,” Maja tells him tentatively.

Ryan isn’t sure if anything has changed in the light of day. Maja seems to get that. When she leaves she kisses him goodbye and tells him to drop by her place sometime.

 

 

Thinking back, Ryan isn’t sure of a lot of things. He knows how he is, knows how he gets caught up in his head and how sometimes he believes the worst in people because it’s the easier option. But Spencer was never like that. He never had to look after anyone but himself; he was careless yes, but unlike Ryan, Spencer never had to be careful.

At lunch Ryan meets up with Z, Alex, and Alex’s new girl, Kirsten. She’s down from LA and apparently she’s not just a friend of a friend of a friend of Alex’s. According to her, they dated in high school. She makes Alex laugh when she calls them high school sweethearts, but the thing is, Ryan finds himself thinking they still are.

He thinks too, that the reason he never knew what he and Spencer were was partly because he never asked.

After lunch he texts Spencer: _u still in town?_

_y_

Then moments later, _y?_

_come ovr_

 

 

He’s been home for a while when Spencer buzzes his apartment.

“Hey,” he says, his voice crackling over the old intercom system.

It’s been months, but he sounds the same. He shouldn’t, Ryan thinks. It isn’t fair that he does.

Spencer pauses. “Can I come up?”

Ryan buzzes him up.

 

 

“It happened so quickly,” Spencer says before Ryan gets a chance to speak. “Ly meet our producer and he loved our stuff and got us an opportunity to get into a real studio. It isn’t an excuse, but I didn’t hide it from you.”

Ryan thinks he gets that. He – he doesn’t work like that. He isn’t the sort of person to jump on a flight and fly half way around the world like Spencer. But, then again, Spencer isn’t like him.

“You didn’t explain,” he tells Spencer, because he didn’t. Not in a way that Ryan could understand. “You didn’t call or anything, you just disappeared on me.”

That is the crux, really. One day Spencer was there, the next he was gone.

At this, Spencer ducks his head. “Yeah, I know.”

Ryan doesn’t know if he would have answered Spencer’s calls, but then again, he can’t know what he would have done. Not really.

“I’m not good at this,” Spencer tells him.

Ryan isn’t either.

“No, I mean, I’m really not good at this,” Spencer says. “I didn’t really get there was a ‘this’ until we were doing post production work.”

Ryan thinks that’s stupid, but then again he’d always taken it for granted that Spencer knew what he was doing. He was the one that kissed Ryan, the one who slung an arm over Ryan’s shoulder and took him home. He was the one that had done it all before.

“I haven’t done shit before you,” Spencer says. “Not really.”

Immediately Ryan thinks of Lykke and remembers what he had forgotten all those times before; Lykke liked being in lust more than being in love. It isn’t an excuse for what happened between then. It could be, but Ryan doesn’t think that’s how it should work. He was stupid too.

For all that Ryan doesn’t know, this is the point where Ryan knows he can let this be, allow this be their closure and let Spencer go back on the road. Or he can try.

He tries. It’s terrifying, but he tries.

So does Spencer.

 

 

The following day Spencer and Lykke head off to their next tour date. Ryan manages to get out and see a few of their gigs during his mid semester break. He never gets used to selling merch or helping with their gear, but some things take more skill than others. In the photo’s Spencer’s posts on the bands facebook, Ryan is forever looking puffed out and sweaty. (Ryan thinks Spencer picks the worst ones on purpose).

In the end, Spencer doesn’t go back to school. He keeps saying he will, but then their tour around the west coast ends up being extended and extended again. By the time they finish, they are in LA and Lykke is humming new tunes and their independent European label is taking about seeing if they can find a stateside one.

Despite the knowledge that Spencer’s happy playing music and having people listen to it, Ryan misses having him around. But he likes knowing that Spencer’s coming home to him. Over the phone Spencer occasionally jokes about crashing on the couch in Ryan’s office when he gets back, and how he’s going to use Ryan’s books as pillows.

“I’m not joking,” he warns Ryan. “I seriously dreamt about curling up in a pile of library books last night.”

Ryan sometimes dreams about finding lost books in his sock draw, but usually only in the lead up to finals. He tells Spencer as much, and he laughs. Neither of them are all that great with doing the long distance thing. It’s new to both of them – being in a relationship is new. But they try. Maybe it won’t work out in the end. Maybe one day they’ll peter out and Ryan will return to academia and Spencer will continue on drumming and neither of them will notice. Sometimes the uncertainty of it all frightens Ryan more than he’s willing to admit. But no one knows what the future brings. All Ryan knows is he’s never wanted anything or anyone as much as he wants to be with Spencer, nor has anyone ever known him as well Spencer does.

And that is enough to keep trying.

 

 

 


End file.
